


Pay Attention (to the Reel)

by orange_8_hands



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Death, Episode Tag, Episode: s02e12 Master Plan, Fourth Wall, Gen, Leaning on the Fourth Wall, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2012-11-25
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:35:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_8_hands/pseuds/orange_8_hands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aw now sugar, we're just making things right. (Tag to 2.12 Master Plan)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pay Attention (to the Reel)

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote the rough draft of the first section awhile ago. As for the rest...um...yeah...

  
If you can, drag your attention away from the breaking tableau of kanima dramatics to Gerard, who staggers/crawls his way out of the warehouse. Despite his best appearances he is not a hunter bred bone deep in him, not like Chris and not like Kate, not even like Victoria (werewolf, nineteen, a kitchen knife and never a backward glance, it was like coming home). He is a survivor; desire to outlive clashing with cancer cells like the will to be the last one standing is all that matters. Black sludge is coating his mouth and he is sixty-four years old, but just because his lack of scars comes down to how he hunts (viciously, with back-up, in surprise sneak attacks) doesn't mean he can't do this. He's going to escape.

  
Not really though. This isn't that kind of story. I ain't that kind of girl. Maybe if we knew more about Dr. Deaton and Ms. Morrell sooner we could have left them to it, two adults in the know striding in the sunlight on a trail, wearing leather like they know what they're doing. Hindsight's fucking tricky, though, and both of them are too mysterious to clear their future plans with the likes of us. We didn't know, see, so instead we do this: we freeze Gerard where he stands, hunched over himself, a few small drips of damnation still spilling from him. Like your television got stuck, like the season's end is glitching.  
  
If you paid attention to the tags you know who walks up to Gerard, lays his hand on Gerard's chest and just...blinks him away, like he never existed. The only thing left is the black liquid on the ground; it'll have the faintest shine in the pretty summer day of tomorrow. Hard to notice now, still dark out, and so he doesn't. Greenberg stands there, panting gently, Finstock's joke and common eavesdropper on hallway conversations, so much more than you imagined, stock photo and wild hair and it's amazing all the secrets he knows when the cameras don't focus on him. He texts a simple _it's done_ message and leaves just as quietly as he came, because whatever happens in there isn't his problem yet, and he's a reactionary kind of guy.  
  
Nah, I'm just fucking with you. Greenberg's jacking off to the tape recording of Coach's pre-game speech. I'd wink but I think you'd miss it.  
  
(What? Girl's gotta have her secrets, but I'm not Rumpelstiltskin, you'll find out my name soon enough.)  
  
There's another loose end though, and it's one that needs to be addressed first. It's five days later. Isaac knows about the Alpha pack. So does Scott. So does Boyd and Erica, but in an entirely much less pleasant way. That's about all Derek knows, and Peter smirks because he can. He may have all the morals of a sociopath (it's not name calling if it's true), but he's also been a werewolf for a very long time, and an intelligent man before that, and someone who actually paid attention to supernatural lessons. Took notes, even.  
  
I can be fair. Maybe too fair. Let a lot of shit slide I shouldn't have. Kept silent, and maybe I deserve some of the blame. And Lydia deserves something in this case, more than Allison did for Gerard. Should let her blow wolfs bane into Peter's face and then jam it down his throat. Could get Stiles to drop a mountain ash circle over Peter and then Lydia can slice and dice to her heart's content.  
  
I want to let her, I do, we have a thing for red, but that's not how this is going to happen.  
  
It's easy to bait him, easy to trap him. He's not Scott, doesn't have to sniff the air when I catch in his nose, burn down his throat because fear hurts more than liquor, and frankly he can't get drunk anyways. I float by when he's at the supermarket, at the store; roll around by the Hale home until he can't ignore the stench. He'd never do something as crass as twitch, but he turns sharper at noises, freezes just slightly whenever he enters the air I've been in. Derek is distracted and the rest of the newly turned don't have a chance of playing this game. The Alphas are smart enough to leave a ghost alone, smart enough not to try. They always forget sharp claws can't win every battle until they're confronted with it, but sometimes their memories are long enough.  
  
(You've been told the wrong fairy tale if you think we were ever _scared_ of the wolf.)  
  
Peter finally follows me deep into the woods, when the moon is full and the Alphas are distracting his nephew and the others. Tries to come up behind me but I slide away, spin like grace and smile like a horror story. He doesn't shift, thinks he can talk his way around, talk his way out of it. Thinks I don't know the traps he's set, the layers of protection he surrounds himself with.  
  
"I liked Laura," I say, because it's true, and it's not why I'm doing this but it doesn't hurt. He opens his mouth, counter-argument ready, snarky comment in place, maybe the first word of a spell, but I don't want to hear it, definitely don't need to, so I appear before him and place my hand on his chest, and however horrible you think it is to watch someone burn alive it's nothing to watching them burn to ash from the inside out. It's easy to gather the leftovers of Peter Hale into a glass jar. I leave it on Derek's porch, so he doesn't wonder (I liked Laura, I really did), set on top of a pile of stones. Maybe the Alphas will take it as warning and back off from the reminder of who is out there, but maybe not. They have a right to slaughter the other pack. They aren't Gerard and they aren't Peter, and all I'm allowed to do is set the dead things back to dead.  
  
Riders have always walked hand in hand with the Reapers.


End file.
